Beer Cost per bottle

[aamcle]

Come on Ray cough it up that price is too good to miss!

Amcle

[orlando]

I confess I'm not really concerned with the saving money aspect and I'm sure if I totted up every penny spent then the price per pint starts to get uncomfortably close to shop bought, so I don't But we've had this sort of thread before and the consensus was it made more sense to look at ingredients costs rather than capital costs as they are more likely to inform one another about how much each pint "costs". Already you start to find brewers discussing base malt prices and that is one you can't avoid. You can use cheaper hops and less of them and of course you could do this with malt but there is a bigger trade off with malt so I always think that is a good starting point and for most of us carriage is the killer. Carriage on 25kg of malt is always going to add significantly to that. Fortunately for me I live in malting barley country so get a bloody good price and only have a 10 minute drive to fetch it. I looked at my last beer brewed and its cost, breaks down like this:


3.750 kg Maris Otter (Crisp) (4.0 EBC) £2.81
0.400 kg Crystal Malt (150.0 EBC) £0.54
0.050 kg Chocolate (1000.0 EBC) £0.08
70.00 g East Kent Goldings [6.57 %] - £2.14
5.70 g Admiral [16.56 %] - £ 0.21
0.50 tsp Protafloc £0.08

1.0 pkg British Ale Yeast (Wyeast Labs #1098) from a slant so very little just the cost of DME really and a fraction of original say £1

So a total of £6.86 of which I probably ended up with 40 pints kegged and force carbed so gas costs but no sugar but again pennies really so lets say 17p a pint. Of course if you use a lot of specialist malt exotic hops and add in carriage costs then it's possible to push this closer to a £1 but as I say, academic really as I don't care for commercial bottled beer that much (never have) and a pint down the pub is going to be 3 times that so my costs are still negligible. I just brew what I want and it costs what it costs. If I really need to know I just have to ask SWMBO, but I don't do that either, now that would be foolish .

[adman1966]

I have to admit that I also don't get too hung up on the exact price per brew. I simply enjoy both the processes of brewing and the pleasure of drinking and sharing my beer.
Having said that I don't like to pay over the top for ingredients, including the shipping costs, and I love to get a bargain on equipment. I recently got 6 demijohns for £1 each which gave me a warm glow in the wallet! Part of this hobby is knowing you have saved some money but for me this is outweighed by the pleasure of creating some good beer, tailored to my taste, available when I fancy it from my shed.
For reference though my last brew worked out around 33p per bottle.

[will_raymo2000]

Woops.. I always seem to miss out pasting the links!
They are in Peterborough, so even if delivery is too much if you're near i'm sure you could pick up some.

http://www.brewersselect.co.uk/

[Hanglow]

Wow that is cheap.

[Pinto]

Thats the place I nearly went when I did the Keg run a few weeks ago, but as I did it on a Sunday they were closed

Marris Otter - £14.40 (LHBS £30.00)
Lager Malt - £13.10 (LHBS £30.00)

Those prices are crazy low ! just on a bag of each, I'd save the cost of my fuel for the journey over my LHBS ! Shame they're just that little bit too far away to make it a viable run. Also, having to buy 25kgs of specialist malt like Roast or Choc barley would see my Stout and porter needs filled till the second coming

They also have Sorachi Ace - but at nearly £150 a bale I think i'll pass

[Ben711200]

I've just signed up on that website. Malt in 25 kilo sacks is perfect, though everything else in commercial quantities isn't much use to me. I tried to go through the motions of ordering, but it looks like delivery prices are calculated individually and I imagine for low volume orders, the delivery will make them no cheaper than anyone else. The impression I get is that they are more used to loading pallets than sending individual sacks of pale malt..

[Pinto]

I've just signed up on that website. Malt in 25 kilo sacks is perfect, though everything else in commercial quantities isn't much use to me. I tried to go through the motions of ordering, but it looks like delivery prices are calculated individually and I imagine for low volume orders, the delivery will make them no cheaper than anyone else. The impression I get is that they are more used to loading pallets than sending individual sacks of pale malt..

Yeah got that feeling too - I think they're more used to dealing with full micro's and larger breweries where they buy at the part/full ton level. Would be perfect if you could get a group of friends or a homebrew club to make a bulk order tho ?

[boingy]

Find some cheaper pale malt and replace the carbonation drops with plain old white sugar.

[will_raymo2000]

I know a local micro that uses them so might see how much it'd be to add on next time they get a delivery. I wonder how much it'd be to have it delivered with myhermes or someone? I'd be happy to help coordinate a group buy if they don't penalise too small an order.

Will give them a ring and see what the deal is tomorrow.

[bigdave]

I get my malt from a local brewery at less than half the price of the LHBS. Today's brew has cost me something like 8-9 pence per 500ml bottle (that's ingredients only, not electric, water etc...)

[scuppeteer]

Woops.. I always seem to miss out pasting the links!
They are in Peterborough, so even if delivery is too much if you're near i'm sure you could pick up some.

http://www.brewersselect.co.uk/

Good prices, but the malt is Bairds I note, so not the greatest. Hops are very expensive though, around £10-£20 more than Farams!

[Patterd Ale]

Bairds? Pfft, no thanks.

[orlando]

Woops.. I always seem to miss out pasting the links!
They are in Peterborough, so even if delivery is too much if you're near i'm sure you could pick up some.

http://www.brewersselect.co.uk/

Good prices, but the malt is Bairds I note, so not the greatest. Hops are very expensive though, around £10-£20 more than Farams!

Bairds do a blend of MO and Pale but are a little deceptive in what they call it, having said that I have used it and it was not significantly poorer than pure MO. The killer for me when I looked into it is of course carriage.

[will_raymo2000]

For those still interested I enquired about delivery with Brewers Select. 11.45+vat per 25kg sack or up to 45 x 25kg sacks on a pallet for £35+vat. They also allow your own courier to collect or collection by the customer.

She sent though a whole price list which I can link to if anyone is interested. The whole malt prices are on exactly £1 cheaper per 25kg than the crushed prices.